Q: What are you all about?
A: Cowman emerged as a response to the bullshit in music. My
band (birdbath) couldn’t get their shit together so I figured, “I can do
something on my own.” Taking cues from early Touch and Go drum machine bands like
Big Black and Flour I started making beats, playing distorted bass over the top
and attempting to do vocals, recording it all onto a four-track. It is all
really lo-fi and an early philosophy I wanted to stick to was not to overwork
material, just come up with a beat, play a riff over it a couple of times to get
a feel for it, record it, then jot down some words and record them. Only if I
was really dissatisfied with the results would I scrap a song or re-record.
Q: What’s with the persona/costume
A: Again to do with my disillusionment with UK bands at the
time I started. I was fed up of seeing bands that just tried to be cool, and
had clearly not thought about what their band-name meant or thought about
having some kind of stage gimmick. Steve Albini with Big Black used to set off
firecrackers before a show, Faust did all kinds of crazy things before, during
and after shows. Hanatarash destroyed a venue with a bulldozer. I wanted to
create something different rather than just another bunch of losers with guitars
playing loud music. So I got a cheap boiler suit, some welding goggles and some
hazard tape and there was Cowman. A friend found a cow’s pelvis in a field that
we made into a kind of helmet that I wore for a while, but it was so
uncomfortable I gave it up. Recently I gave up on the goggles, as I was sick of
not being able to see at shows.
The name came from a few places, first I am a vegan, and
vegan shit can stink out a place, so when a flatmate said, ‘dude, you stink
like a cow, man’ the name stuck. I also like the Simpsons connection, ‘don’t
have a cow, man’ and the reference to a little known song by U.S. Maple “When a
man says ow.” As a vegan it is a reference to the fact that people are animals,
like saying a cow is like a man – you eat beef, but would you eat man beef?
Kind of confrontational. Most people don’t get it though.
Q: What’s with the music?
A: I like loud, distorted bass sounds, and so that it what I
have tried to create. I have recorded about 7 albums worth of material, with
the first effort ‘cowman’ now unavailable. That had a mixture of material where
I was experimenting with synths and different drum sounds, and some of it is
poor quality. The first proper album, ‘The Joy Of Not Being Sold Anything’ I am
still quite happy with. It came about as I was living in London and had been
working on material for a project I was working on with a friend called
Midnight Moth. That was about recording an album in 24 straight hours. We had
already recorded two fairly successful albums, however we got stuck with
‘artistic differences’ on the third, fell out big time (I haven’t spoken to him
since) and put all my creative juices into this Cowman album. In response to my
Midnight Moth partner selling cds with my playing on them without either my
consent or my feeling that the material was good enough to sell was to put
together an album to give away free. The golden inspiration was seeing the
fresh Banksy graffiti on a London billboard giving me the title and cover of
the album. Nice. Next was the pun titled ‘gina,’ get it? Cowmangina. Ha ha.
This is probably my favourite album as I managed to get a really high pitched,
electronic sounding bass/guitar sound that reminded me of Big Black. It is also
pretty dark too. After that was “Apocalypse Cow” (not the best pun I know)
which was a lot more experimental and disjointed – there is some synth stuff,
live drums, improvised stuff and some of my favourite songs like bubblegum bum
rape and senigalia on there, my first release on ingue records. The last album
was the crushingly intense “palpating the rumen” Around 70 minutes of
relentless high impact music. I was trying to create an album as tight as Big
Black’s “Songs About Fucking” and succeeded in making an album twice the
length. In hindsight I should have cut some of the material, but at the time I
wanted an evil beast, and that is what I ended up with, similar in some ways to
‘gina.’ That was in 2009, and since then I have recorded a covers album and an
experimental concept album (one track is on soundcloud), no release date for either yet, maybe 2013.
Q:Tour?
A:I find playing live a real headache, too many gadgets to
keep track of – this is the problem with being solo, however it is hugely
rewarding so I may be tempted into playing if I get the right offer. The problem
is the state of music in the UK at the moment is so deflated that a noise-rock
act like me is no longer a draw even as a novelty. With bands like Aids Wolf breaking up and Doomsday Student only playing the Supersonic Festival in
Birmingham and London it says to me that traditional touring routes are off,
only major cities need apply. Last time I played Bristol I was seen by about 10
people which gets a bit depressing, and if the promoter is losing money then so
are the bands. Live music is a decent income stream if you are in the right
band and you are promoted properly. Unfortunately being unsigned or ‘novelty’
does not get you good support slots or get you a good booking agent. But we’ll
see after I have finished my studies.
Q:Studies?
A: I’m currently working of a thesis about the writers PaulBowles and William S. Burroughs. When that is done I may have some more time
for music…
